Illustrated WPF

With WPF, Microsoft started from scratch and built a UI framework that is more logical, powerful, and integrated than previous frameworks. But its different from previous frameworks, and you need to understand its structure and paradigms to use it effectively. One of the reasons WPF has a reputation of having a steep and extensive learning curve is that we, as programmers, think that all UI frameworks are pretty much the same, just with different API classes, methods, and parameters. In the case of WPF, however, this definitely is not case. The result is that when programmers just jump from another framework to WPF without learning the basics, theyre frustrated that everything seems so different. The purpose of this book is to teach you the fundamentals and mechanics of WPF programming as quickly and simply as possible, while giving you a firm grasp of whats actually going on under the covers. To do this, Ive used a combination of text, figures, bulleted lists, and tables. Many of us think visually. To us, figures, bulleted lists, and tables help clarify and crystallize our understanding of a concept by cutting through the clutter of pages of dense paragraphs of explanation. My experience was repeatedly confirmed, when, in several years of teaching programming, I found that the pictures I drew on the whiteboard were the things that most quickly helped students understand the concepts I was trying to convey.